Bob Crum

@Bob Crum

Posts made by Bob Crum

@jon-anderson True, and I have done so as well, but I'd love the theory behind what makes a surprised face vs. a scared face etc. It's the theory I am after really. I suppose I should've clarified that. Thank you!

QUESTION: I've been stuck with regard to facial expressions. I go to google, check references and even use other people's references, but I have wondered - does SVS have a course for that? I looked around but I get easily overwhelmed (HAHHAHA artists). If there is nothing, I would think that is a great topic for a new course.

I hadn't until recently - I started one. I got the request to illustrate a poem written in 13 stanzas and the author wanted me to do a full page piece for each stanza. Such a strange poem too! I love it.
The first stanza:
"I muse about people and things that I see; it drives me to fantasy. The blue liquesces to exotic shores with hippos and zebras and grebes."
And the art:
What do you think? I have 12 more of these things to do!

@Nazuba I may not be the illustrious Will Terry but I wanted to throw my two cents in on this one because I love it!

First off, I don't see a whole lot of difference between your images so I laid them on top of another and I see that your Image 2 is a little more saturated and a tad lighter. #2 is better that way because it will probably print nicer.

But then I got thinking about that red fruit... beautiful work there. It's just a shame that it matches her dress so closely that it disappears! I ran a quick look at the dress as if it were green (i dont know if those colors you have are culturally significant, so if they are... forgive me.) Since green is complimentary to red, I chose it and it works! Just an idea.

Thanks for letting me mess around with your stuff. I really like the piece.

Whoooo hoooo! Welcome! This is a fun illustration with really well crafted characters. Your rendering is quite good with the trees, and all the details. applause

You mentioned that you knew there were composition issues and some values that need tweaking. I thought I would lend some TOTALLY unsolicited critique of just the composition of the piece.

Since it is a wall mural (or is it not?) I know adding details is a giant pain... so I tried to keep this fairly simple but more complex than it was.

First off, whenever you have more than one character in a frame, you are implying a relationship of some kind. So I looked at your story here and found some ways to group the characters.

The tent pitching guys were feeling distant and maybe unconnected _ I feel moving them closer and fixing the squirrel's eye line made it a little more readable. A little scaling up of the size too.

The little mice with their own campfire seemed distant as well and I imagined them trying to be like the dog and bunny with their big fire, so they set up shop on the opposite side of the fire. Now both groups are looking at one another. Similarly, I flipped your monky to be facing that direction. Flipping the monkey solved the relationship issue and also the readability of the ice chest vs. 2 Litre bottle conundrum. WIth those elements separated, the monkey stands out more and the ice chest has its place as well.

As you can see, I added more trees. The three that you proposed were equidistant and the middle one just about bisected the frame evenly - this lends to a more predictable and somewhat boring composition. Adding more trees and sizing them up and down makes the forest feel homey and wooded (though I would still move that center tree out of the dead center of the piece). Also, having the one tree go off the frame on the bottom right makes it feel almost like we are an observer without interaction to the scene. Like we are peeking in on an adventure or moment.

Lastly, your shrubs were all the same height (relatively) across the back of the image. That stripe was hiding the monkey and the tire swing - so I gave the hedge a little more randomness and dropped the tire a bit to start jogging the composition back and forth a little for more rhythm.

I know you said it was probably too late for this piece to change, but I really liked it so I thought I would add my two cents. Good luck with this and future pieces!

I use photoshop A LOT - but only because I am very familiar with it from graphic design. I know there are better programs for digital illustration.

Corel Painter is a great product but is probably more focused on mimicking true-to-life effects and as such makes the files sort of large. Pretty though. and a couple hundred bucks.

Clip Studio Paint (formerly Manga Studio) is pretty cool for a lot of illustration styles but really excels with respect to heavier line work (like comics). There are some neat vector illustration features as well. The documentation is all a little hard to read as it has been translated from ... I think Japanese? It's only about 60 bucks (i think).

This is shaping up to be a nice story! Well thought out for sure.
You asked, in a thread above, if there were any issues with perspective so I thought I would throw something together (I don't have my Cintiq in the office today so the pen tool will have to do).
I increased my canvas size to WAAAYY out there - so i could find your vanishing points. I'd say that, for the most part, you have a pretty consistent piece here! BUT I had to take issue with the furniture in the foreground and the wall behind the skelly and girl. Using the points that I extrapolated from your exiting lines, I fixed the pieces. I think it is much more believable now.
Also, you mentioned that you might leave it black and white... while I LOVE the idea of starting all my paintings with tones of black and white, I feel that adding color typically deepens the perception of quality (and perception is reality to clients). To that end, I put together a triptych of the composition - left (before) - middle (after) - right (two colors).
You can see that just adding two colors to the composition makes it more dramatic. I can feel the moonlit interior of the room because it is contrasted with a warm foreground. This even gives you a neat opportunity to make a light blue highlight on the edges of the figures, thus defining them even more in the composition.
Wordy as it may be, I hope you found this a little helpful - I like your piece a lot or I would not even try.
Good luck!